Video: Damian Lewis On How He And Ralph Fiennes Were ‘A Bunch Of 20-Year-Old, Horny Englishmen On Broadway’

We already know that Homeland star Damian Lewiscan rock a pretty sweet “Gangnam Style,” but as he becomes more and more beloved, we get more insight into his other talents. Damian stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live last night to chat about his rising star as well as all of the productions he did back when he was an unknown.

And yes, that’s him showing off his Movember mustache on Twitter. You’re welcome.

For instance, did you know that back in 1995 he and Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies) starred on Broadway in Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Ralph was the titular prince, while Laertes played his quasi-brother-in-law Laertes. As we also learned from the article I linked to above, Damian is a great storyteller, especially when reflecting on his awkward encounters. Here, he talks about what a fun time he and Ralph were having in NYC in the ‘90s, plus a key fight scene that got a little too real:

”This fight was getting faster and faster, because we were getting kind of cocky. We were just a bunch of 20-year-old, horny Englishmen on Broadway having the time of our life in a smash-hit show, so we were staying out later and later and later. Finally, it just got to a point where the thing was going faster and faster, and Ralph was thrusting at me, and I was just sort of parrying. And then one night, he came at me particularly hard and I sort of went, in a tired way, ‘Oh, God’… and the pommel came back and hit me right above the eye.

“As soon as it hit me, I thought, That feels bad. I know what a cut feels like, and that feels bad. But it came at the point of the fight where Hamlet went that way, Laertes went that way, so Ralph didn’t see what he’d done. I fell on the floor and I came up like this, and I was like the Bride of Dracula, with blood pouring down the side of my face.

“And he didn’t stop acting! It’s amazing. But he just came closer and closer to me with those piercing blue eyes. And he kept going with Shakespeare, and he went [in a whisper], ‘Are you OK?’ And I said, ‘I dunno, you tell me!’… And then all I could hear in the audience were people going [in an American accent], ‘That’s amazing, honey, how did they do that?’”

But of course, you don’t get the full impact from the quote alone. Watch the video, starting at around the two-minute mark, to see Damian’s adorable miming and gesturing:

And here’s a photo of the two in probably the same fight scene he described: